Jan 16 (Reuters) – Four Venezuelan banks received notice this week from the country’s government that they would split $300 million in oil revenue deposited in accounts in Qatar, allowing them to sell dollars to Venezuelan companies that need foreign currency to pay for materials, two financial sources and an analyst said.
Foreign capital has poured in as dollar supplies have tightened for weeks as the United States seized Venezuelan oil tankers and hit the country’s biggest source of revenue.
Venezuelan companies that need to import raw materials have long had to exchange local bolivars for dollars held by the central bank, generated through oil sales and transactions made with foreign credit cards within the country.
The United States said this week it had completed the first $500 million in sales of Venezuelan oil, part of a $2 billion deal struck this month after President Nicolas Maduro stepped down and interim leader Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in. The administration of U.S. President Trump said Venezuela would sell 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil.
An industry source familiar with the scheme said the main account for the transactions was located in Qatar.
Rodriguez said on Thursday that some of the revenue would be used for social projects and infrastructure, as she submitted a proposal to the country’s legislature to reform hydrocarbons laws aimed at boosting oil investment.
Authorities told four local financial institutions on Thursday, all with correspondent banks abroad, that they would each receive about $75 million in oil revenue in the coming days, two sources said.
The dollars could be sold to companies in Venezuela based on central bank guidelines, the source added. Neither the Treasury nor the central bank responded to requests for comment.
“About $500 million has been deposited in the Qatar Trust Fund. $300 million of this amount will be sold to four large private banks,” economist Alejandro Grisanti, director of local analytics firm Ecoanalitica, wrote on X on Friday. “These operations will not go through the central bank as the institution is still subject to sanctions.”
The Venezuelan government began allowing the use of U.S. dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies such as USDT on trading markets in the second half of 2025 after the United States issued a crude oil export restriction license to Chevron but prohibited payments to the government.
But even cryptocurrency flows to the private sector have declined, one source said, adding that distribution through cryptocurrencies could decline if more dollars flow in from crude oil sales.
